Facility will be able to provide abortions, will drop lawsuit against state

The Ohio Department of Health has approved a variance request from Planned Parenthood's Elizabeth Campbell Surgical Center in Mount Auburn and renewed its license as a surgical center.

Planned Parenthood recently filed a civil rights lawsuit against Ohio challenging the constitutionality of recent restrictions on clinics, saying they amounted to an undue burden on women seeking abortions.The clinic had been in danger of having to cease providing the procedure after being cited by the state for not having a transfer agreement with an area hospital in compliance with Ohio law.

The clinic had waited 14 months for the state to respond to its request for a variance to that law. The clinic employs physicians who have admitting privileges with area hospitals, allowing it to be exempted from the law.

“We are pleased that ODH has approved of the emergency plan we have in place for patients,” said Jerry Lawson, CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio. “This ruling will ensure that women in Southwest Ohio continue to have access to safe and legal abortion.”

Union Township Rep. John Becker backs abortion ban for most insurance and Medicaid

Union Township Rep. John Becker doesn't exactly have a history of standing up for causes CityBeat agrees with, and this week we're seeing more of the same.

He's the voice behind another Republican-backed bill introduced Nov. 14, that, if passed, would introduce regulations that would ban most public and private health insurance policies, including Medicaid, from covering abortion care and several common methods of contraception.According to a press release from NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, H.B. 351 would manipulate language on the Ohio Revised Code to redefine abortion services and restrict public hospitals from performing abortions — even on women whose lives are at risk due to the pregnancy or who have been victims of rape.

NARAL Executive Director Kellie Copeland commented, "Imagine
facing a life-threatening pregnancy complication and being told that
your insurance won’t cover the procedure because Ohio politicians banned
that coverage.
Imagine becoming pregnant as the result of a rape, and having to cover
the cost of an abortion out of pocket because this bill became law. It’s
unthinkable."

Also introduced on Wednesday to U.S. Congress was the Women's Health Protection Act, what supporters are calling a historic pro-choice bill that would outlaw states' authority to limit women's reproductive rights by prohibiting states from passing Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which impose extra regulations on doctors who operate in medical practices that perform abortions. The bill, which will likely face harsh odds in the U.S.'s conservative-dominated House, wouldn't completely diminish states' existing anti-abortion laws, although it require judges to be more carefully reconsider cases that challenge the legality of already-existing laws. Becker's bill has yet to be assigned to a committee. Here's the bill in full.

As one of the self-proclaimed "most conservative" members of his party, he's also a cosponsor of the state's Heartbeat Bill and once called the proposal of a needle-exchange program, which could reduce the spread of infectious bloodborne diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, the product of a "liberal media agenda."

In August, Becker introduced a bill that would kick a large chunk of pregnant women and low-income parents off of Medicaid by grossly lowering the entry eligibility.

Becker also recently lobbied for the impeachment of the judge who
allowed the state to legally recognize the marriage of Jim Obergefell
and his 20-year partner, John Arthur, who recently passed away from Lou Gehrig's disease, for his decision.

Crowd-sourced maps will show where and who is illegally limiting emergency contraceptives

The right to obtain emergency contraception is one that was only recently granted to all women of child-bearing age, marking a huge national victory for women's health rights over conservative political agendas.

But now that's it's available over-the-counter, is it really easy to access?

According to the Reproductive Justice Reporting Project, it depends on where and who you are.

The project, a newly-formed coalition comprising a number of alternative news publications under the umbrella of the Association of Alternative News Media (AAN) and the Media Consortium, part of a larger initiative to "study how independent news organizations can work together to create a collective impact," according to AAN.

The newest component of the project — "Where Is Your Plan B?" — is a website that uses crowd-sourced data to monitor the availability of emergency contraceptives across the country.

News outlets collaborating on the project include Austin Chronicle, Bitch Magazine, In These Times, LEO Weekly, Making Contact/National Radio Project, Ms. Magazine, People*Power*Media, Portland Mercury, Public News Service and Santa Fe Reporter.

Once the site gets a little more press, it will start publishing detailed maps documenting which pharmacies are readily providing Plan B, where it might be illegally restricted and where it's available but possibly made more difficult to obtain by roadblocks. For now, you can also find a thorough collection of investigative works from the Reproductive Justice Reporting Project from its participating news outlets, chronicling everything from how Native American women are being actively denied fair access to Plan B and women's access to abortion in New Mexico.

Plan B One-Step was first approved in July 2009 for use without a prescription for women only ages 17 or older; women younger than 17 were previously required to obtain a prescription.

In April, Judge Edward Korman ruled that the age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception were "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable." His ruling prompted the FDA to announce Plan B One-Step's availability to women 15 and older without a prescription, which was in June amended to include women of child-bearing age.

Many women's health advocates have expressed concerns about how pharmacies arerestricting accessibility to the drug, such as asking for identification even though the FDA doesn't require it or keeping the drug locked up or behind a counter, which could be a daunting barrier for some young girls, making an already unpleasant experience worse.

Commonly known as the "morning-after pill," Plan B is intended to be used when other methods of contraception fail. In extreme cases, it can be a rape victim's only option to prevent becoming pregnant.

The drug, which contains powerful levels of hormones found in some types of birth control pills, is more effective the more quickly it's taken after having unprotected sex, particularly within three days. That means having to obtain a prescription could null the effects of the pill or render it ineffective for a young woman struggling to get a doctor's appointment.

A research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January 2012 found that of several pharmacies called in five different cities, 20 percent did not have emergency contraception in stock on the same day the patient called.

Plunderbund Ohio reports that Gov. John Kasich has picked up his first endorsement for a presidential bid from Citizens for Community values president and executive director and self-professed former porn addict Phil Burress, following Kasich's signing of some of the country's most archaic and restrictive anti-abortion provisions in the nation. This week’s news story by CityBeat’s most glamorous
misanthrope, German Lopez, explains how the recently passed state budget
caters to Republicans by lowering taxes for the rich,tries to block health care for the poor and effectively defunds Planned Parenthood and its valuable health services.

Eleven school buses were hijacked from the Petermann Bus Company bus lot in Golf Manor. All but one of the buses has been recovered. Ralph Brown, who supervises the company, speculated some kids just wanted to take a "joy ride."

Columbia Parkway is open again after massive flash flooding and landslides inundated the road, but this weekend's wet forecast could cause it to flood again.

SPCA Cincinnati is adopting out cats and kittens for just $5 through this weekend in honor of Independence Day. Visit the Northside or the Sharonville location.

Women in Egypt are at a staggeringly high risk to become
victims of sexual assault. More than 80 women were raped, sexually
harassed or sexually assaulted during Wednesday night’s mob celebration
of the forced departure of president Mohamed Morsi on Tahrir Square in
downtown Cairo.

Buttercup, a duck born with his left foot twisted backward, is now on top of the world
after his owner used 3D printing to create a brand new foot for Buttercup. Here is a video for good measure.

National HIV Testing Day to raise awareness, promote health

To honor National HIV Testing Day — a day meant to raise awareness about the virus — Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio region is offering free HIV testing at three locations in the Cincinnati area.

Free HIV testing is available today at from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Cincinnati's VA Medical Center (3200 Vine St.) and from 1-5 p.m. at the Lower Price Hill Health Center (2136 E. Eighth St.). The test is done quickly using a method called rapid HIV testing, which produces results immediately.

About 1.1 million people in the United States are living with HIV at any given time, and about one in five of those don't even realize they're infected.

That means those one in five could, at any time, be unknowingly transmitting the disease to their partners, or that they're missing out on taking important preventative measures that could keep the infection from developing into AIDS. The HIV virus is most commonly spread through unprotected sexual contact or sharing needles, or can be passed down from mother to child during pregnancy or shortly after birth. For more basic information about HIV, click here.

In 2012, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio provided 1,225 HIV tests amongst its eight facilities, among a number of other preventive services. Currently, Planned Parenthood branches across Ohio are being threatened by Ohio conservatives' efforts to defund the organization, which provides myriad health services in addition to abortion, including cancer and STD screenings, birth control, pregnancy testing and health care for both men and women. State and federal funds used by Planned Parenthood aren't used to fund abortions, which are instead funded by private donations.

If successful, the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature could pass a budget this weekend that would put Planned Parenthood at the back of the line for state funds. A separate set of federal funds would also go to crisis pregnancy centers, which have a history of using scare tactics and false information about abortion.

Under Obama's Affordable Care Act, which will go into effect in 2014, insurance providers will be required to cover HIV testing and birth control.

Repeated discrimination in local Catholic Church takes spotlight

The Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati has been mired in quite a bit of trouble over the past several years for its morally outdated (and unjust) policies, and now one of the allegations has reached the courts. Today marked the second day of juror hearings in a schoolteacher's lawsuit against the Archdiocese and the two schools from which she was fired for violating her civil rights.

In 2010, schoolteacher Christa Dias, a single, non-ministerial employee at both Holy Family and St. Lawrence Schools, parochial schools owned and operated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, became pregnant via artificial insemination. At five and a half months pregnant, she asked her employers for something millions of U.S. women ask for every year: maternity leave.

She got more than she bargained for, though, when her employers fired her, assuming Dias had engaged in premarital sex (one of the many "moral" no-nos in the Catholic Church — for women, at least). She was informed that she was let go because she'd violated a moral clause in the Catholic doctrine that she'd agreed to adhere to when she signed her employment contract, which, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, makes it okay to discriminate when the discrimination falls under something called "ministerial exception" — a pesky and vague part of civil labor laws exempting religious policies from some basic rules for equality in the workplace.

Ergo: Women who are fired by the Catholic Church for getting pregnant face unfair discrimination because men aren't held to the same standard. Obviously, it's impossible to detect whether or not single male employees are engaging in premarital sex (but they probably are). The basis of Dias' lawsuit is that that little gender caveat is an inherent for of discrimination against women because women and men aren't held to the same moral standards.

Although her employers originally told her she was fired for premarital sex, they later retracted that assertion and said that the use of artificial insemination was immoral, also a violation of the Catholic doctrine.

According to the AP, Dias today told jurors she didn't realize that artificial insemination was a violation of church doctrine or that having the procedure could get her fired. The archdiocese's attorney, Steve Goodin, says that Dias was not discriminated against because she signed a contract that clearly commanded she abide by the Catholic doctrine.

CityBeat reported on a similar case of discrimination by the Catholic Church earlier this year ("Unforgiven Offenses," issue of Jan. 9, 2013), which detailed a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio by former schoolteacher Kathleen Quinlan, who was also fired from her non-ministerial position at Ascension Catholic School in Kettering, Ohio, in December 2011 after she approached her principal, told him about her pregnancy and offered to work behind-the-scenes until she gave birth.

Again, her employers and the Archdiocese used the "morality clause" to defend their position.

And then there was Johnathan Zeng ("Gays, Even Christians, Need Not Apply," issue of June 13, 2012), who was offered a job as a music teacher at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy (CHCA) Armleder School after two weeks of discussions; Zeng even put on a teacher demonstration in front of a third grade class. When a board representative asked him point-blank if he was gay, Zeng told the truth: yes, he was gay. All of a sudden, Zeng was out of the running, even though he was already pinpointed as the most qualified applicant.

Some local Catholics, at least, are firing back against the archdiocese's archaic policies; recently, Debra Meyers was ordained as Cincinnati's first female Catholic priest by the Association of Roman Woman Catholic Priests, despite opposition from local Catholic leaders and the Vatican.Read our interview with her here.

Citing the possibility of “gateway sexual activity,” the
bill would make it so teachers can be fined up to $5,000 if they
explain the use of condoms and other forms of birth control to high school
students. It would also prohibit individuals and groups from
distributing birth control on school grounds.

The bill pushes abstinence-only education to curtail any promotion, implicit or
explicit, of gateway sexual activity. To define such activity, the bill
cites Ohio’s criminal code definition for “sexual contact,” which is defined as “any
touching of an erogenous zone of another, including without limitation
the thigh, genitals, buttock, pubic region, or, if the person is a
female, a breast.”

The bill would also redirect federal funding to defund Planned Parenthood and shift funds to crisis pregnancy centers, which CityBeat covered in further detail here.

“Today the Ohio House Finance Committee voted to send our
state back to the 1950s,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of
NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, in a statement. “The Ohio House is doing
everything they can to restrict access to reproductive health care and
medically accurate information that help Ohioans live healthy lives.
(Gov. John) Kasich can stop these dangerous attacks on women’s health
care. We need him to speak out against these budget provisions and to
line-item veto these dangerous measures when they reach his desk.”

Researchers have found abstinence-only programs to be generally ineffective. A 2007 study
published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found abstinence-only
programs have no impact on rates for teenage pregnancy or vaginal
intercourse, while comprehensive programs that include birth control
education reduce rates.

A 2011 study
from researchers at the University of Georgia that looked at data from
48 states concurred abstinence-only programs do not reduce the rate of
teenage pregnancy. The study indicated states with the lowest teenage
pregnancy rates tend to have the most comprehensive sex and HIV
education programs.

When looking at three ways to prevent unintended pregnancies for a 2012 study,
the Brookings Center on Children and Families found the most
cost-effective policy was to increase funding for family planning
services through the Medicaid program. In other words, if governments increased spending on birth control programs, they would
eventually save money.

Still, a 2010 study
from a University of Pennsylvania researcher found abstinence-only
education programs may delay sexual activity. The study, which tracked
black middle school students over two years, found students in an
abstinence-only program had lower rates of sexual activity than students
in the comprehensive program.

At hearings on April 12, anti-abortion groups praised abstinence-only education for promoting chastity.

Threat of lawsuit next phase in Anna Louise Inn dispute

Financial giant and Lytle Park bully Western & Southern has accused city officials and other Anna Louise Inn advocates of repeatedly deceiving the Department of Housing and Urban Development in order to obtain federal funds for the long-awaited, $13 million renovations to the Inn.

Those renovations are the same ones that have been blocked over and over by a series of legal entanglements initiated by Western & Southern, which tried to purchase the Inn back in 2009 for $1.8 million, refusing to buffer the Inn's $3 million price tag. In 2011, the Hamilton County Auditor valued the plot at $4 million.

Now, the corporate giant, which owns a number of other plots of land in Lytle Park, wants to buy the Inn and convert it into an upscale hotel.

Western & Southern’s lawyer, Glenn Whitaker, sent a letter obtained by CityBeat dated March 19 to City Solicitor John Curp accusing city officials of knowingly violating the federal Fair Housing Act by allowing the owner of the Inn, Cincinnati Union Bethel (CUB), to pursue federal funding for renovations while providing services to exclusively women in need, which the letter alleges would “discriminate on the basis of gender” and “expose the City to liability under both the federal False Claims Act and the FHA.”

“We share this with you because — no matter where one stands on whether ALI’s renovations comply with Cincinnati Zoning Code — it is in the public interest for the City to avoid a lawsuit that could lead to a significant payout in today’s budget environment,” reads the letter.

Of course, that lawsuit is one that would be entirely fabricated and launched by Western & Southern, on top of years worth of zoning violation allegations that, so far, have failed to gather much merit.

Some women-only shelters are deemed permissible due to safety issues, but in the letter, Whitaker alleges that the renovation plans exposeALI to discrimination liability by, in theory, making the safety issuemoot by providing clear, separated spaces for men and women. The renovation plans include converting what are now dormitory-style units with shared bathrooms into private residences with private bathrooms and kitchens, according to the letter.

Curp, who received the letter, says the city’s relationship with HUD is one that hinges on constant communication, and though Western & Southern's allegations were unexpected, they'll be taken seriously.

“We work with them closely, we have a great relationship with HUD. They were the first organization we contacted when we got this letter, ... so they understood the nature of the allegations and because they’re one of our development partners. We have lots of development partners in the city, frankly, including Western & Southern. ... We're disappointed that the city has been pulled into what is otherwise a third-party dispute."

The letter also accuses a number of community members, including 3CDC, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, the Model Group, the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition and the YMCA of conspiring to move low-income residents from the Metropole to the Anna Louise Inn in order to ease litigation with the Homeless Coalition and make way for the new, upscale 21c Museum Hotel.

John Barrett, Western & Southern’s CEO, is also on the board of 3CDC, which adds an extra element of mystery to the lodged accusations; at best, it seems extreme they'd be willing to accuse ally 3CDC of wrongdoing or conspiracy for the sake of a discrimination lawsuit against a nonprofit social services agency whose stated goal for more than 100 years has been to provide a haven for women in need.

Ideally, explains Curp, HUD will respond equipped with some sort of past precedent that would absolve the city and the Inn of alleged discrimination and make the lawsuit irrelevant.

"I think a lawsuit would be very much premature. ... Like I said, our first step is to talk to HUD and to make sure that between the both of us, we don’t see any discrimination or compliance issues. If there’s any chance of that ... after our review and a review by HUD, we will fix it to bring it into compliance," he says.

"As I sit here today, I can't imagine this situation hasn't been dealt with in the past. I'd be shocked if HUD hasn't dealt with this in another community and come up with a set of guidelines for us to follow."

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

•Enquirer
reporter Sharon Coolidge’s use of open records law documented
Cincinnati’s lax enforcement of lead paint removal orders. She told
CityBeat that her coverage included positive impacts in addition to
those above in my main column:

The
day after her story was published, Mayor Mark Mallory ordered health
officials to explain why they hadn't forced problem landlords to clean
up their properties.

Three
public hearings led to a comprehensive city plan to eliminate childhood
lead poisoning by 2010. The plan lowers the medical threshold at which
health officials can intervene, thus catching lead poisoning in its
earliest stages.

City
Council gave the health department more than $1 million to finance
reforms. Poor families are getting kits to detect whether their homes
are contaminated.

In
one of his first acts as new governor, Ted Strickland allowed cities to
sue lead-paint producers; Cincinnati is suing Sherwin-Williams.

State
lawmakers are considering a new law, named after a family featured in
the Enquirer story, to provide $20,000 grants for lead removal.

•A
more recent public benefit from open records laws involved the Enquirer
suit to obtain secret streetcar vendors’ bids. Attorney Jack Greiner,
who handles First Amendment issues for the paper, said that Cincinnati's
ordinance requires bids be available for public review. Faced with
resistance, the Enquirer went to court. Hamilton County appellate judges
agreed with the paper, rejecting company arguments that records were
exempt from public records law as "trade secrets."

•Unless
you’re living under a Rock of Cliches, you’ve read or heard that flu is
sweeping the nation. Every sneeze, every cough, every chill and shiver
warns us that the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse is tethering his
pale horse at our curb. The catch is that despite breathless news media
offerings, little unusual is happening except for an early, aggressive
onset of the perennial scourge. Thousands die every year from flu, most
of them elderly. It would be news if we didn’t. Annual death estimates —
hampered by incomplete reporting and similar health problems — range
from 3,000 to 49,000.

•An
Enquirer Sunday Forum carried Michael Kinsley’s column about Hillary
Clinton’s extensive foreign travel as secretary of state. Kinsley doubts
the value of much of her travel but in today’s world, “The less
important the trip, the more prestige you gain by taking it.” Having
time and money to waste proves you have time and money to waste . . .
even if you’re on the taxpayers’ clock and paycheck. Maybe that
explains an otherwise inexplicable Enquirer revelation that Steve Chabot
is a foreign policy expert, citing his extensive foreign travel at
taxpayer expense.

•Enquirer
reporter Dan Horn produced two nay-saying front page stories. Both were
welcome surprises from Cincinnati’s “get on the team” daily. One questioned the argument that right-to-work laws provide an economic
boost in states like Indiana, Michigan, or, potentially, Ohio. That
anti-union policy was a staple topic in my 1950s high school debating
days. Economic analysis, like divining why crime rates change, is more
complicated than whether union membership is optional or required in a
“union shop.” Too many union/right-to-work debates — fueled by
no-compromise advocates putting re-election before public benefit —
ignore complexity.

•A
second invocation of skepticism by the Enquirer’s Dan Horn raised
serious doubts about feel-good gun buy-back programs. I’ll go this far
on guns: each firearm bought back and destroyed (not bought back and
sold to dealers for resale) is a gun that won’t kill someone. Cincinnati
Police destroy buy-back weapons not needed for investigations.
Buy-back, however, won’t change life on Cincinnati streets where scores
of young men kill each other each year. Anyone who wants a firearm can
get one faster than you can say, “Your money or your life.” Similar
doubts about Cincinnati’s gun buy-back program made Page 1 of the New
York Times.

•Fox
19’s Dave Culbreth came up with a smart take on the controversial idea
of arming teachers and school administrators. He interviewed Target
World assistant manager Amy Hanlon who demonstrated how a woman could
carry a concealed handgun. As Culbreth noted, there was nothing special
about her clothing: slacks, blouse, overshirt. By the end of the
interview, she’d removed nine concealed semi-automatics or revolvers,
including one tucked under her bra in a holster that also was displayed
on a counter-top mannequin bust.

•WCPO-TV plans an online local news challenge to the Enquirer’s Cincinnati.com,
according to Business Courier’s Jon Newberry. It’s a pioneering effort
by Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps that could go national, Newberry
suggested. Whether additional reporters, producers, editors, etc., will
come from the Business Courier and other established news media was not
clear. Scripps — a Cincinnati-based national print and broadcast company— published the Cincinnati Post until it closed the barely-sustaining
joint operating agreement with the Enquirer ended in 2007.

•Blogger
Peter Heimlich tipped me to Channel 19 anchor Ben Swann’s web gig
called Full Disclosure. Swann says there are enough witnesses to
challenge official police narratives of single shooters at three recent
massacres: the Oak Creek, Wis., Sikh temple; Aurora, Colo., Batman movie
premiere, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Salon.com challenged Swann about his apparent validation of those counter-narratives and he replied in part, “The
bottom line for me is the issue of asking questions. As you will
notice, I don’t call these operations ‘false flag’ as many people do …
(his ellipses) But as a journalist, that is not my job. Rather, my job
is to be a critical thinker.” And he added, “most of our media fail to question stories . . . a journalist’s job is not to have the answers, it is to ask the questions and search for truth.”

•There’s
a pathetic undercurrent in the Enquirer’s Monday Page1 profile of
Henry Heimlich’s efforts to regain American Red Cross support for his
eponymous “maneuver.” The physician claims there is no research to
support the Red Cross’s decision to return to back slaps rather than
Heimlich abdominal thrusts as first response to choking. Other than
Heimlich’s self-serving claims, there is no research proving his
maneuver works as well or better than back slaps. Assertions are not
evidence. Moreover, the Red Cross adopted Heimlich’s maneuver years ago
without the research Heimlich is calling for now. Heimlich has
anecdotal evidence of lives saved but that’s not research. Wisely,
reporter Cliff Radel quoted skeptics and critics of the maneuver. That
kind of even-handedness usually escapes admiring Enquirer stories about
Heimlich. And if the paper ever corrected a Memorial Day feature on
water safety, I missed it. The Enquirer drew national ridicule with its
illustration on how to use Heimlich’s maneuver to revive a standing
near-drowning victim.

•It’s
spitting into the wind to ask sports reporters to question what jocks
tell them, especially when truth-telling endangers future access. In the
Good Old Days, who read about fornicating, drunken and racist
professional athletes? More recently, golf reporters and publications
didn’t write about married Tiger Woods’ screwing around. This time, it’s
Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o’s stories about the heart-ripping
death of girlfriend Lennay Kekua from leukemia. Editors loved it. Now,
it seems she was a fiction amplified by incurious and credulous
reporters. It took sports blog Deadspin.com
to reveal the fraud after its reporters could find no public records of
her birth, life, education or death. Almost as nauseating as the
saccharine original stories about her death are the faux introspection
by sycophant reporters caught by the fraud.

•We’ve
gone a week without a promo for Oprah’s interview with champion
liar-cheater Lance Armstrong. That’s closure. So what does Armstrong do
now? Pitch performance enhancing drugs and blood transfusions on ESPN
and late TV?

•Al
Gore sold his troubled Current cable network to Al Jazeera, the
satellite network based in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Good. Nothing bars
foreigners from owning a cable network here, unlike the law that forced
Australian Rupert Murdoch to obtain U.S. citizenship after he bought Fox.

Backed
by the ruling Qatari emir, Al Jazeera scandalized Americans for
broadcasting tirades by Osama bin Laden and other anti-western Arab
leaders. We should have welcomed what they said in Arabic for home
audiences. Too often, we rely on sanitized remarks for
non-Arabic-speaking audiences or Washington assurances it was trying to
verify that speakers were who they said they were. Al Jazeera also
infuriated Arab audiences by carrying interviews with American and
Israeli officials that others in the Middle East ignored or rejected.

Most
American cable companies won’t carry the newer Al Jazeera English but
its website is one of my daily stops, especially when, say, AQIM kidnaps
oil workers in Algeria or French Legionnaires assist Mali’s pathetic
army in trying to halt and turn back Islamist rebels.

Al
Jazeera coverage of “Arab Spring” was so aggressive that embattled
North African rulers correctly accused it of supporting anti-government
demonstrators. So is Al Jazeera open to interference by the Qatari
government? Yes. Are its biases plain to anyone who listens or reads?
Yes. We don’t ignore Fox News for its biases.

•American
news media employ local nationals in foreign bureaus for their contacts
and language skills. That reliance failed when no one reported the 2010
anti-semitic rant by Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who
now is Egypt’s president. In part, Morsi called Jews “apes and dogs” and
shared the fantasy that the Palestinian Authority was “created by the
Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will
of the Palestinian people and its interests.”

Still
nastier, he urged listeners “to nurse our children and our
grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews . . .
bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the
descendants of apes and pigs.”

A
stump speech in his Nile Delta hometown, it took more than two years to
reach English-language news media. The original Arabic video is on
YouTube now. I encountered a translation of Morsi this month on a Forbes
website that, in part, chided the New York Times for missing or killing
the story. Days later, it was on Page 1 of the Times. After that, the
Obama administration an official “tut-tut.”

•Maybe
they’ll blame one of those ominous Canadian Cold Air Masses
(meteorological, not theological) for the brain freeze that disabled
news judgment at the Toronto Star. Flippant columns about rape aren’t
funny. Jimromenesko.com
posted these first two paragraphs of Rosie DiManno’s column about
testimony during the sexual abuse trial of a local physician:

“She lost a womb but gained a penis.

“The former was being removed surgically — full hysterectomy — while the latter was forcibly shoved into her slack mouth..."

•Headlines
are an art that always risks a step too far in an attempt to cure the copy editor boredom and draw readers to a story. This one, from philly.com,
achieves both in what has become a national story about a popular and
well-connected parish pastor: “Catholic priest/meth dealer liked sex in
the rectory.” You know you’d read more.

•Finally,
this from Shannyn Moore, who blogs on HuffPost as “Just a Girl from
Homer, Alaska.” It appeared first in the Anchorage Daily News and makes
her points without venturing beyond the pale into bad taste: “I'm
not advocating for no guns. I like mine and am not about to give them
up. But in this country, my uterus is more regulated than my guns. Birth
control and reproductive health services are harder to get than
bullets. What is that about? Guns don't kill people — vaginas do?”

Judge allows convicted student to withdraw his plea, then seals case again

The case of a
former Miami University student who pleaded guilty to disorderly
conduct for posting a “Top Ten Ways to Get Away with Rape” flier in a
dormitory bathroom just keeps getting more controversial.

The
controversy began Nov. 8, when Butler County Area 1 Court Judge Robert
Lyons took the guilty plea and ordered all record of the case —
including the defendant’s name — sealed from public view. The MU police
chief says he is bound by Lyons’ order and can’t release the name. The
Butler County Prosecuting Attorney’s office did not object to the
sealing of the file.

The Cincinnati Enquirer
entered the picture six days later. It sued Lyons in the Ohio Supreme
Court, saying he sealed the file without giving the newspaper a chance
to argue for public access. In his answer — filed by the Prosecuting
Attorney’s office on Dec. 13 — Lyons stood by his actions. Furthermore,
he wrote that “there was no plea” in the case.

Now we know
where that came from. On that very same day, the case was back in Lyons
court for reconsideration. This time, prosecutors agreed to drop the
charge, and Lyons ruled it so. And, once again, he sealed the file, and
no one present objected. The Enquirer reported on the dismissal Wednesday.

Prosecuting
Attorney Mike Gmoser won’t say why he agreed to dropping the charge
until the Supreme Court case is over. “Save that question, and I will
give you a full and detailed statement,” he told CityBeat. “I don’t try cases in the press.”

Gmoser said he is asking the Supreme Court to dismiss the Enquirer’s suit because the issue at hand is “moot.”

Facility will be able to provide abortions, will drop lawsuit against state

The Ohio Department of Health has approved a variance request from Planned Parenthood's Elizabeth Campbell Surgical Center in Mount Auburn and renewed its license as a surgical center.

Planned Parenthood recently filed a civil rights lawsuit against Ohio challenging the constitutionality of recent restrictions on clinics, saying they amounted to an undue burden on women seeking abortions.The clinic had been in danger of having to cease providing the procedure after being cited by the state for not having a transfer agreement with an area hospital in compliance with Ohio law.

The clinic had waited 14 months for the state to respond to its request for a variance to that law. The clinic employs physicians who have admitting privileges with area hospitals, allowing it to be exempted from the law.

“We are pleased that ODH has approved of the emergency plan we have in place for patients,” said Jerry Lawson, CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio. “This ruling will ensure that women in Southwest Ohio continue to have access to safe and legal abortion.”

Union Township Rep. John Becker backs abortion ban for most insurance and Medicaid

Union Township Rep. John Becker doesn't exactly have a history of standing up for causes CityBeat agrees with, and this week we're seeing more of the same.

He's the voice behind another Republican-backed bill introduced Nov. 14, that, if passed, would introduce regulations that would ban most public and private health insurance policies, including Medicaid, from covering abortion care and several common methods of contraception.According to a press release from NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, H.B. 351 would manipulate language on the Ohio Revised Code to redefine abortion services and restrict public hospitals from performing abortions — even on women whose lives are at risk due to the pregnancy or who have been victims of rape.

NARAL Executive Director Kellie Copeland commented, "Imagine
facing a life-threatening pregnancy complication and being told that
your insurance won’t cover the procedure because Ohio politicians banned
that coverage.
Imagine becoming pregnant as the result of a rape, and having to cover
the cost of an abortion out of pocket because this bill became law. It’s
unthinkable."

Also introduced on Wednesday to U.S. Congress was the Women's Health Protection Act, what supporters are calling a historic pro-choice bill that would outlaw states' authority to limit women's reproductive rights by prohibiting states from passing Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which impose extra regulations on doctors who operate in medical practices that perform abortions. The bill, which will likely face harsh odds in the U.S.'s conservative-dominated House, wouldn't completely diminish states' existing anti-abortion laws, although it require judges to be more carefully reconsider cases that challenge the legality of already-existing laws. Becker's bill has yet to be assigned to a committee. Here's the bill in full.

As one of the self-proclaimed "most conservative" members of his party, he's also a cosponsor of the state's Heartbeat Bill and once called the proposal of a needle-exchange program, which could reduce the spread of infectious bloodborne diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, the product of a "liberal media agenda."

In August, Becker introduced a bill that would kick a large chunk of pregnant women and low-income parents off of Medicaid by grossly lowering the entry eligibility.

Becker also recently lobbied for the impeachment of the judge who
allowed the state to legally recognize the marriage of Jim Obergefell
and his 20-year partner, John Arthur, who recently passed away from Lou Gehrig's disease, for his decision.

Crowd-sourced maps will show where and who is illegally limiting emergency contraceptives

The right to obtain emergency contraception is one that was only recently granted to all women of child-bearing age, marking a huge national victory for women's health rights over conservative political agendas.

But now that's it's available over-the-counter, is it really easy to access?

According to the Reproductive Justice Reporting Project, it depends on where and who you are.

The project, a newly-formed coalition comprising a number of alternative news publications under the umbrella of the Association of Alternative News Media (AAN) and the Media Consortium, part of a larger initiative to "study how independent news organizations can work together to create a collective impact," according to AAN.

The newest component of the project — "Where Is Your Plan B?" — is a website that uses crowd-sourced data to monitor the availability of emergency contraceptives across the country.

News outlets collaborating on the project include Austin Chronicle, Bitch Magazine, In These Times, LEO Weekly, Making Contact/National Radio Project, Ms. Magazine, People*Power*Media, Portland Mercury, Public News Service and Santa Fe Reporter.

Once the site gets a little more press, it will start publishing detailed maps documenting which pharmacies are readily providing Plan B, where it might be illegally restricted and where it's available but possibly made more difficult to obtain by roadblocks. For now, you can also find a thorough collection of investigative works from the Reproductive Justice Reporting Project from its participating news outlets, chronicling everything from how Native American women are being actively denied fair access to Plan B and women's access to abortion in New Mexico.

Plan B One-Step was first approved in July 2009 for use without a prescription for women only ages 17 or older; women younger than 17 were previously required to obtain a prescription.

In April, Judge Edward Korman ruled that the age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception were "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable." His ruling prompted the FDA to announce Plan B One-Step's availability to women 15 and older without a prescription, which was in June amended to include women of child-bearing age.

Many women's health advocates have expressed concerns about how pharmacies arerestricting accessibility to the drug, such as asking for identification even though the FDA doesn't require it or keeping the drug locked up or behind a counter, which could be a daunting barrier for some young girls, making an already unpleasant experience worse.

Commonly known as the "morning-after pill," Plan B is intended to be used when other methods of contraception fail. In extreme cases, it can be a rape victim's only option to prevent becoming pregnant.

The drug, which contains powerful levels of hormones found in some types of birth control pills, is more effective the more quickly it's taken after having unprotected sex, particularly within three days. That means having to obtain a prescription could null the effects of the pill or render it ineffective for a young woman struggling to get a doctor's appointment.

A research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January 2012 found that of several pharmacies called in five different cities, 20 percent did not have emergency contraception in stock on the same day the patient called.

Plunderbund Ohio reports that Gov. John Kasich has picked up his first endorsement for a presidential bid from Citizens for Community values president and executive director and self-professed former porn addict Phil Burress, following Kasich's signing of some of the country's most archaic and restrictive anti-abortion provisions in the nation. This week’s news story by CityBeat’s most glamorous
misanthrope, German Lopez, explains how the recently passed state budget
caters to Republicans by lowering taxes for the rich,tries to block health care for the poor and effectively defunds Planned Parenthood and its valuable health services.

Eleven school buses were hijacked from the Petermann Bus Company bus lot in Golf Manor. All but one of the buses has been recovered. Ralph Brown, who supervises the company, speculated some kids just wanted to take a "joy ride."

Columbia Parkway is open again after massive flash flooding and landslides inundated the road, but this weekend's wet forecast could cause it to flood again.

SPCA Cincinnati is adopting out cats and kittens for just $5 through this weekend in honor of Independence Day. Visit the Northside or the Sharonville location.

Women in Egypt are at a staggeringly high risk to become
victims of sexual assault. More than 80 women were raped, sexually
harassed or sexually assaulted during Wednesday night’s mob celebration
of the forced departure of president Mohamed Morsi on Tahrir Square in
downtown Cairo.

Buttercup, a duck born with his left foot twisted backward, is now on top of the world
after his owner used 3D printing to create a brand new foot for Buttercup. Here is a video for good measure.

National HIV Testing Day to raise awareness, promote health

To honor National HIV Testing Day — a day meant to raise awareness about the virus — Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio region is offering free HIV testing at three locations in the Cincinnati area.

Free HIV testing is available today at from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Cincinnati's VA Medical Center (3200 Vine St.) and from 1-5 p.m. at the Lower Price Hill Health Center (2136 E. Eighth St.). The test is done quickly using a method called rapid HIV testing, which produces results immediately.

About 1.1 million people in the United States are living with HIV at any given time, and about one in five of those don't even realize they're infected.

That means those one in five could, at any time, be unknowingly transmitting the disease to their partners, or that they're missing out on taking important preventative measures that could keep the infection from developing into AIDS. The HIV virus is most commonly spread through unprotected sexual contact or sharing needles, or can be passed down from mother to child during pregnancy or shortly after birth. For more basic information about HIV, click here.

In 2012, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio provided 1,225 HIV tests amongst its eight facilities, among a number of other preventive services. Currently, Planned Parenthood branches across Ohio are being threatened by Ohio conservatives' efforts to defund the organization, which provides myriad health services in addition to abortion, including cancer and STD screenings, birth control, pregnancy testing and health care for both men and women. State and federal funds used by Planned Parenthood aren't used to fund abortions, which are instead funded by private donations.

If successful, the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature could pass a budget this weekend that would put Planned Parenthood at the back of the line for state funds. A separate set of federal funds would also go to crisis pregnancy centers, which have a history of using scare tactics and false information about abortion.

Under Obama's Affordable Care Act, which will go into effect in 2014, insurance providers will be required to cover HIV testing and birth control.

Repeated discrimination in local Catholic Church takes spotlight

The Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati has been mired in quite a bit of trouble over the past several years for its morally outdated (and unjust) policies, and now one of the allegations has reached the courts. Today marked the second day of juror hearings in a schoolteacher's lawsuit against the Archdiocese and the two schools from which she was fired for violating her civil rights.

In 2010, schoolteacher Christa Dias, a single, non-ministerial employee at both Holy Family and St. Lawrence Schools, parochial schools owned and operated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, became pregnant via artificial insemination. At five and a half months pregnant, she asked her employers for something millions of U.S. women ask for every year: maternity leave.

She got more than she bargained for, though, when her employers fired her, assuming Dias had engaged in premarital sex (one of the many "moral" no-nos in the Catholic Church — for women, at least). She was informed that she was let go because she'd violated a moral clause in the Catholic doctrine that she'd agreed to adhere to when she signed her employment contract, which, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, makes it okay to discriminate when the discrimination falls under something called "ministerial exception" — a pesky and vague part of civil labor laws exempting religious policies from some basic rules for equality in the workplace.

Ergo: Women who are fired by the Catholic Church for getting pregnant face unfair discrimination because men aren't held to the same standard. Obviously, it's impossible to detect whether or not single male employees are engaging in premarital sex (but they probably are). The basis of Dias' lawsuit is that that little gender caveat is an inherent for of discrimination against women because women and men aren't held to the same moral standards.

Although her employers originally told her she was fired for premarital sex, they later retracted that assertion and said that the use of artificial insemination was immoral, also a violation of the Catholic doctrine.

According to the AP, Dias today told jurors she didn't realize that artificial insemination was a violation of church doctrine or that having the procedure could get her fired. The archdiocese's attorney, Steve Goodin, says that Dias was not discriminated against because she signed a contract that clearly commanded she abide by the Catholic doctrine.

CityBeat reported on a similar case of discrimination by the Catholic Church earlier this year ("Unforgiven Offenses," issue of Jan. 9, 2013), which detailed a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio by former schoolteacher Kathleen Quinlan, who was also fired from her non-ministerial position at Ascension Catholic School in Kettering, Ohio, in December 2011 after she approached her principal, told him about her pregnancy and offered to work behind-the-scenes until she gave birth.

Again, her employers and the Archdiocese used the "morality clause" to defend their position.

And then there was Johnathan Zeng ("Gays, Even Christians, Need Not Apply," issue of June 13, 2012), who was offered a job as a music teacher at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy (CHCA) Armleder School after two weeks of discussions; Zeng even put on a teacher demonstration in front of a third grade class. When a board representative asked him point-blank if he was gay, Zeng told the truth: yes, he was gay. All of a sudden, Zeng was out of the running, even though he was already pinpointed as the most qualified applicant.

Some local Catholics, at least, are firing back against the archdiocese's archaic policies; recently, Debra Meyers was ordained as Cincinnati's first female Catholic priest by the Association of Roman Woman Catholic Priests, despite opposition from local Catholic leaders and the Vatican.Read our interview with her here.

Citing the possibility of “gateway sexual activity,” the
bill would make it so teachers can be fined up to $5,000 if they
explain the use of condoms and other forms of birth control to high school
students. It would also prohibit individuals and groups from
distributing birth control on school grounds.

The bill pushes abstinence-only education to curtail any promotion, implicit or
explicit, of gateway sexual activity. To define such activity, the bill
cites Ohio’s criminal code definition for “sexual contact,” which is defined as “any
touching of an erogenous zone of another, including without limitation
the thigh, genitals, buttock, pubic region, or, if the person is a
female, a breast.”

The bill would also redirect federal funding to defund Planned Parenthood and shift funds to crisis pregnancy centers, which CityBeat covered in further detail here.

“Today the Ohio House Finance Committee voted to send our
state back to the 1950s,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of
NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, in a statement. “The Ohio House is doing
everything they can to restrict access to reproductive health care and
medically accurate information that help Ohioans live healthy lives.
(Gov. John) Kasich can stop these dangerous attacks on women’s health
care. We need him to speak out against these budget provisions and to
line-item veto these dangerous measures when they reach his desk.”

Researchers have found abstinence-only programs to be generally ineffective. A 2007 study
published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found abstinence-only
programs have no impact on rates for teenage pregnancy or vaginal
intercourse, while comprehensive programs that include birth control
education reduce rates.

A 2011 study
from researchers at the University of Georgia that looked at data from
48 states concurred abstinence-only programs do not reduce the rate of
teenage pregnancy. The study indicated states with the lowest teenage
pregnancy rates tend to have the most comprehensive sex and HIV
education programs.

When looking at three ways to prevent unintended pregnancies for a 2012 study,
the Brookings Center on Children and Families found the most
cost-effective policy was to increase funding for family planning
services through the Medicaid program. In other words, if governments increased spending on birth control programs, they would
eventually save money.

Still, a 2010 study
from a University of Pennsylvania researcher found abstinence-only
education programs may delay sexual activity. The study, which tracked
black middle school students over two years, found students in an
abstinence-only program had lower rates of sexual activity than students
in the comprehensive program.

At hearings on April 12, anti-abortion groups praised abstinence-only education for promoting chastity.

Threat of lawsuit next phase in Anna Louise Inn dispute

Financial giant and Lytle Park bully Western & Southern has accused city officials and other Anna Louise Inn advocates of repeatedly deceiving the Department of Housing and Urban Development in order to obtain federal funds for the long-awaited, $13 million renovations to the Inn.

Those renovations are the same ones that have been blocked over and over by a series of legal entanglements initiated by Western & Southern, which tried to purchase the Inn back in 2009 for $1.8 million, refusing to buffer the Inn's $3 million price tag. In 2011, the Hamilton County Auditor valued the plot at $4 million.

Now, the corporate giant, which owns a number of other plots of land in Lytle Park, wants to buy the Inn and convert it into an upscale hotel.

Western & Southern’s lawyer, Glenn Whitaker, sent a letter obtained by CityBeat dated March 19 to City Solicitor John Curp accusing city officials of knowingly violating the federal Fair Housing Act by allowing the owner of the Inn, Cincinnati Union Bethel (CUB), to pursue federal funding for renovations while providing services to exclusively women in need, which the letter alleges would “discriminate on the basis of gender” and “expose the City to liability under both the federal False Claims Act and the FHA.”

“We share this with you because — no matter where one stands on whether ALI’s renovations comply with Cincinnati Zoning Code — it is in the public interest for the City to avoid a lawsuit that could lead to a significant payout in today’s budget environment,” reads the letter.

Of course, that lawsuit is one that would be entirely fabricated and launched by Western & Southern, on top of years worth of zoning violation allegations that, so far, have failed to gather much merit.

Some women-only shelters are deemed permissible due to safety issues, but in the letter, Whitaker alleges that the renovation plans exposeALI to discrimination liability by, in theory, making the safety issuemoot by providing clear, separated spaces for men and women. The renovation plans include converting what are now dormitory-style units with shared bathrooms into private residences with private bathrooms and kitchens, according to the letter.

Curp, who received the letter, says the city’s relationship with HUD is one that hinges on constant communication, and though Western & Southern's allegations were unexpected, they'll be taken seriously.

“We work with them closely, we have a great relationship with HUD. They were the first organization we contacted when we got this letter, ... so they understood the nature of the allegations and because they’re one of our development partners. We have lots of development partners in the city, frankly, including Western & Southern. ... We're disappointed that the city has been pulled into what is otherwise a third-party dispute."

The letter also accuses a number of community members, including 3CDC, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, the Model Group, the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition and the YMCA of conspiring to move low-income residents from the Metropole to the Anna Louise Inn in order to ease litigation with the Homeless Coalition and make way for the new, upscale 21c Museum Hotel.

John Barrett, Western & Southern’s CEO, is also on the board of 3CDC, which adds an extra element of mystery to the lodged accusations; at best, it seems extreme they'd be willing to accuse ally 3CDC of wrongdoing or conspiracy for the sake of a discrimination lawsuit against a nonprofit social services agency whose stated goal for more than 100 years has been to provide a haven for women in need.

Ideally, explains Curp, HUD will respond equipped with some sort of past precedent that would absolve the city and the Inn of alleged discrimination and make the lawsuit irrelevant.

"I think a lawsuit would be very much premature. ... Like I said, our first step is to talk to HUD and to make sure that between the both of us, we don’t see any discrimination or compliance issues. If there’s any chance of that ... after our review and a review by HUD, we will fix it to bring it into compliance," he says.

"As I sit here today, I can't imagine this situation hasn't been dealt with in the past. I'd be shocked if HUD hasn't dealt with this in another community and come up with a set of guidelines for us to follow."

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

•Enquirer
reporter Sharon Coolidge’s use of open records law documented
Cincinnati’s lax enforcement of lead paint removal orders. She told
CityBeat that her coverage included positive impacts in addition to
those above in my main column:

The
day after her story was published, Mayor Mark Mallory ordered health
officials to explain why they hadn't forced problem landlords to clean
up their properties.

Three
public hearings led to a comprehensive city plan to eliminate childhood
lead poisoning by 2010. The plan lowers the medical threshold at which
health officials can intervene, thus catching lead poisoning in its
earliest stages.

City
Council gave the health department more than $1 million to finance
reforms. Poor families are getting kits to detect whether their homes
are contaminated.

In
one of his first acts as new governor, Ted Strickland allowed cities to
sue lead-paint producers; Cincinnati is suing Sherwin-Williams.

State
lawmakers are considering a new law, named after a family featured in
the Enquirer story, to provide $20,000 grants for lead removal.

•A
more recent public benefit from open records laws involved the Enquirer
suit to obtain secret streetcar vendors’ bids. Attorney Jack Greiner,
who handles First Amendment issues for the paper, said that Cincinnati's
ordinance requires bids be available for public review. Faced with
resistance, the Enquirer went to court. Hamilton County appellate judges
agreed with the paper, rejecting company arguments that records were
exempt from public records law as "trade secrets."

•Unless
you’re living under a Rock of Cliches, you’ve read or heard that flu is
sweeping the nation. Every sneeze, every cough, every chill and shiver
warns us that the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse is tethering his
pale horse at our curb. The catch is that despite breathless news media
offerings, little unusual is happening except for an early, aggressive
onset of the perennial scourge. Thousands die every year from flu, most
of them elderly. It would be news if we didn’t. Annual death estimates —
hampered by incomplete reporting and similar health problems — range
from 3,000 to 49,000.

•An
Enquirer Sunday Forum carried Michael Kinsley’s column about Hillary
Clinton’s extensive foreign travel as secretary of state. Kinsley doubts
the value of much of her travel but in today’s world, “The less
important the trip, the more prestige you gain by taking it.” Having
time and money to waste proves you have time and money to waste . . .
even if you’re on the taxpayers’ clock and paycheck. Maybe that
explains an otherwise inexplicable Enquirer revelation that Steve Chabot
is a foreign policy expert, citing his extensive foreign travel at
taxpayer expense.

•Enquirer
reporter Dan Horn produced two nay-saying front page stories. Both were
welcome surprises from Cincinnati’s “get on the team” daily. One questioned the argument that right-to-work laws provide an economic
boost in states like Indiana, Michigan, or, potentially, Ohio. That
anti-union policy was a staple topic in my 1950s high school debating
days. Economic analysis, like divining why crime rates change, is more
complicated than whether union membership is optional or required in a
“union shop.” Too many union/right-to-work debates — fueled by
no-compromise advocates putting re-election before public benefit —
ignore complexity.

•A
second invocation of skepticism by the Enquirer’s Dan Horn raised
serious doubts about feel-good gun buy-back programs. I’ll go this far
on guns: each firearm bought back and destroyed (not bought back and
sold to dealers for resale) is a gun that won’t kill someone. Cincinnati
Police destroy buy-back weapons not needed for investigations.
Buy-back, however, won’t change life on Cincinnati streets where scores
of young men kill each other each year. Anyone who wants a firearm can
get one faster than you can say, “Your money or your life.” Similar
doubts about Cincinnati’s gun buy-back program made Page 1 of the New
York Times.

•Fox
19’s Dave Culbreth came up with a smart take on the controversial idea
of arming teachers and school administrators. He interviewed Target
World assistant manager Amy Hanlon who demonstrated how a woman could
carry a concealed handgun. As Culbreth noted, there was nothing special
about her clothing: slacks, blouse, overshirt. By the end of the
interview, she’d removed nine concealed semi-automatics or revolvers,
including one tucked under her bra in a holster that also was displayed
on a counter-top mannequin bust.

•WCPO-TV plans an online local news challenge to the Enquirer’s Cincinnati.com,
according to Business Courier’s Jon Newberry. It’s a pioneering effort
by Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps that could go national, Newberry
suggested. Whether additional reporters, producers, editors, etc., will
come from the Business Courier and other established news media was not
clear. Scripps — a Cincinnati-based national print and broadcast company— published the Cincinnati Post until it closed the barely-sustaining
joint operating agreement with the Enquirer ended in 2007.

•Blogger
Peter Heimlich tipped me to Channel 19 anchor Ben Swann’s web gig
called Full Disclosure. Swann says there are enough witnesses to
challenge official police narratives of single shooters at three recent
massacres: the Oak Creek, Wis., Sikh temple; Aurora, Colo., Batman movie
premiere, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Salon.com challenged Swann about his apparent validation of those counter-narratives and he replied in part, “The
bottom line for me is the issue of asking questions. As you will
notice, I don’t call these operations ‘false flag’ as many people do …
(his ellipses) But as a journalist, that is not my job. Rather, my job
is to be a critical thinker.” And he added, “most of our media fail to question stories . . . a journalist’s job is not to have the answers, it is to ask the questions and search for truth.”

•There’s
a pathetic undercurrent in the Enquirer’s Monday Page1 profile of
Henry Heimlich’s efforts to regain American Red Cross support for his
eponymous “maneuver.” The physician claims there is no research to
support the Red Cross’s decision to return to back slaps rather than
Heimlich abdominal thrusts as first response to choking. Other than
Heimlich’s self-serving claims, there is no research proving his
maneuver works as well or better than back slaps. Assertions are not
evidence. Moreover, the Red Cross adopted Heimlich’s maneuver years ago
without the research Heimlich is calling for now. Heimlich has
anecdotal evidence of lives saved but that’s not research. Wisely,
reporter Cliff Radel quoted skeptics and critics of the maneuver. That
kind of even-handedness usually escapes admiring Enquirer stories about
Heimlich. And if the paper ever corrected a Memorial Day feature on
water safety, I missed it. The Enquirer drew national ridicule with its
illustration on how to use Heimlich’s maneuver to revive a standing
near-drowning victim.

•It’s
spitting into the wind to ask sports reporters to question what jocks
tell them, especially when truth-telling endangers future access. In the
Good Old Days, who read about fornicating, drunken and racist
professional athletes? More recently, golf reporters and publications
didn’t write about married Tiger Woods’ screwing around. This time, it’s
Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o’s stories about the heart-ripping
death of girlfriend Lennay Kekua from leukemia. Editors loved it. Now,
it seems she was a fiction amplified by incurious and credulous
reporters. It took sports blog Deadspin.com
to reveal the fraud after its reporters could find no public records of
her birth, life, education or death. Almost as nauseating as the
saccharine original stories about her death are the faux introspection
by sycophant reporters caught by the fraud.

•We’ve
gone a week without a promo for Oprah’s interview with champion
liar-cheater Lance Armstrong. That’s closure. So what does Armstrong do
now? Pitch performance enhancing drugs and blood transfusions on ESPN
and late TV?

•Al
Gore sold his troubled Current cable network to Al Jazeera, the
satellite network based in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Good. Nothing bars
foreigners from owning a cable network here, unlike the law that forced
Australian Rupert Murdoch to obtain U.S. citizenship after he bought Fox.

Backed
by the ruling Qatari emir, Al Jazeera scandalized Americans for
broadcasting tirades by Osama bin Laden and other anti-western Arab
leaders. We should have welcomed what they said in Arabic for home
audiences. Too often, we rely on sanitized remarks for
non-Arabic-speaking audiences or Washington assurances it was trying to
verify that speakers were who they said they were. Al Jazeera also
infuriated Arab audiences by carrying interviews with American and
Israeli officials that others in the Middle East ignored or rejected.

Most
American cable companies won’t carry the newer Al Jazeera English but
its website is one of my daily stops, especially when, say, AQIM kidnaps
oil workers in Algeria or French Legionnaires assist Mali’s pathetic
army in trying to halt and turn back Islamist rebels.

Al
Jazeera coverage of “Arab Spring” was so aggressive that embattled
North African rulers correctly accused it of supporting anti-government
demonstrators. So is Al Jazeera open to interference by the Qatari
government? Yes. Are its biases plain to anyone who listens or reads?
Yes. We don’t ignore Fox News for its biases.

•American
news media employ local nationals in foreign bureaus for their contacts
and language skills. That reliance failed when no one reported the 2010
anti-semitic rant by Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who
now is Egypt’s president. In part, Morsi called Jews “apes and dogs” and
shared the fantasy that the Palestinian Authority was “created by the
Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will
of the Palestinian people and its interests.”

Still
nastier, he urged listeners “to nurse our children and our
grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews . . .
bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the
descendants of apes and pigs.”

A
stump speech in his Nile Delta hometown, it took more than two years to
reach English-language news media. The original Arabic video is on
YouTube now. I encountered a translation of Morsi this month on a Forbes
website that, in part, chided the New York Times for missing or killing
the story. Days later, it was on Page 1 of the Times. After that, the
Obama administration an official “tut-tut.”

•Maybe
they’ll blame one of those ominous Canadian Cold Air Masses
(meteorological, not theological) for the brain freeze that disabled
news judgment at the Toronto Star. Flippant columns about rape aren’t
funny. Jimromenesko.com
posted these first two paragraphs of Rosie DiManno’s column about
testimony during the sexual abuse trial of a local physician:

“She lost a womb but gained a penis.

“The former was being removed surgically — full hysterectomy — while the latter was forcibly shoved into her slack mouth..."

•Headlines
are an art that always risks a step too far in an attempt to cure the copy editor boredom and draw readers to a story. This one, from philly.com,
achieves both in what has become a national story about a popular and
well-connected parish pastor: “Catholic priest/meth dealer liked sex in
the rectory.” You know you’d read more.

•Finally,
this from Shannyn Moore, who blogs on HuffPost as “Just a Girl from
Homer, Alaska.” It appeared first in the Anchorage Daily News and makes
her points without venturing beyond the pale into bad taste: “I'm
not advocating for no guns. I like mine and am not about to give them
up. But in this country, my uterus is more regulated than my guns. Birth
control and reproductive health services are harder to get than
bullets. What is that about? Guns don't kill people — vaginas do?”

Judge allows convicted student to withdraw his plea, then seals case again

The case of a
former Miami University student who pleaded guilty to disorderly
conduct for posting a “Top Ten Ways to Get Away with Rape” flier in a
dormitory bathroom just keeps getting more controversial.

The
controversy began Nov. 8, when Butler County Area 1 Court Judge Robert
Lyons took the guilty plea and ordered all record of the case —
including the defendant’s name — sealed from public view. The MU police
chief says he is bound by Lyons’ order and can’t release the name. The
Butler County Prosecuting Attorney’s office did not object to the
sealing of the file.

The Cincinnati Enquirer
entered the picture six days later. It sued Lyons in the Ohio Supreme
Court, saying he sealed the file without giving the newspaper a chance
to argue for public access. In his answer — filed by the Prosecuting
Attorney’s office on Dec. 13 — Lyons stood by his actions. Furthermore,
he wrote that “there was no plea” in the case.

Now we know
where that came from. On that very same day, the case was back in Lyons
court for reconsideration. This time, prosecutors agreed to drop the
charge, and Lyons ruled it so. And, once again, he sealed the file, and
no one present objected. The Enquirer reported on the dismissal Wednesday.

Prosecuting
Attorney Mike Gmoser won’t say why he agreed to dropping the charge
until the Supreme Court case is over. “Save that question, and I will
give you a full and detailed statement,” he told CityBeat. “I don’t try cases in the press.”

Gmoser said he is asking the Supreme Court to dismiss the Enquirer’s suit because the issue at hand is “moot.”